


La mer a bercé mon cœur pour la vie

by theoldgods



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Drawing, Hand Jobs, Love Confessions, M/M, Mirror Sex, Oxford, Pre-Canon, Snow and Ice, Snowball Fight, Writing on the Body, Yuleporn, Yuletide, Yuletide 2015, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:01:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5462597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/pseuds/theoldgods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have things to do the first week of Hilary term; there's no need to get involved in a snowball fight. But Bill is restless, Jim is uncertain, and they continue to slide together nonetheless, in and out of the snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La mer a bercé mon cœur pour la vie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide 2015 for a few of gonergone's particular likes! Hopefully they're done okay here. ;)
> 
> This is precanon but fits within the movieverse technically (Jim knows Hungarian instead of Czech, for instance). The title ("The sea has rocked my heart for life") is from ["La Mer"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGcp3_OT2-0) (link goes to the Julio Iglesias version used in the film). See the end notes for translations of the very brief instances of foreign language used in the fic itself.
> 
> I'm always up for Haydeaux and TTSS pain on [my tumblr](http://theoldgods.tumblr.com) if you like.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, everyone!

Bill Haydon is the reason Jim is standing on the snowed-under cricket pitch, freezing to death in his peacoat, hat, scarf, and worn gloves. He has far better things to be doing this first week of Hilary term, and so does Bill, who spent just that morning at breakfast complaining about all the revision he’d be doing until spring. Nonetheless, when Bill’s fellow Optimates had shown up at his door begging for a good romp in the snow, they’d gone along, forgoing their own tumble—the second of the day, after Jim had woken still drunk in Bill’s bed—for the sake of fraternity.

Jim does not really belong with the Optimates, all of whom come from stock far more unabashedly English than his own and all of whom run Christ Church like their own private miniature Britain. They pay him little mind, Haydon’s tagalong friend, tolerated for his athletic skills, his ability to run half marathons at the drop of a hat almost any time of day or night. As Jim tackles Macmillan into a snow pile, dropping slush down the back of his neck and feeling him twitch and howl beneath him, he knows it’s only a matter of time before they grow weary even of that and demand Bill toss him.

Macmillan nonetheless is laughing, red-faced but cheery, as he emerges and retaliates with a snowball of his own, one Jim ducks to avoid. They’d begun on the same team—the game had started with teams, something tactical and appropriate for the future rulers of the British Empire—but everything had quickly devolved into a free-for-all, and Macmillan is one of the nicer blokes in the Optimates, better able to smile around the stick up his arse. The way he looks at Bill sometimes makes Jim suspect that Macmillan too has had a taste of Artist Haydon, as they sometimes call him, and instead of filling Jim with jealousy or rage, that idea mostly makes him smile.

British upper-class jockeying for position he doesn’t always understand, after all, but lust for Haydon seems increasingly written into his bones.

Bill himself, nominally the captain of their poorly arranged side, is lounging on a snow pile watching and attempting to remove slush from his hair. “Bonham, you twit,” he hollers after the ginger who is his second in command. “Corner him near the pavilion, that’s it.” His voice is underlaid with uncharacteristic gravel.

Bonham, chasing after a stout bloke in glasses, attempts to slam his quarry against the side of the pavilion and falls instead, disappearing into a snowbank.

“Bloody hell,” Macmillan mutters, laughing, rolling away from Jim and toward their downed teammate. “Useless arse.”

Jim glances at Bill, now swinging his legs in midair, shoulders tensed, his back turned on them to focus his attentions further down the pitch. As Bill yells after Williams, who’s making snow angels instead of assailing their enemies, Jim comes up behind him and waits for his chance.

“And you there, Stuart, what _are_ you doing to that poor bloke? Let him up, man, this is a friendly—”

His haranguing melts into a scream as Jim leaps onto his back, sending them flying. Through the deadening snow around them Jim can just make out hoots of laughter from the other men.

Jim reappears first, spitting out a mouthful of snow and waiting for Bill, who pops up with a disgusted, reluctant grin on his face.

“Mutiny!”

Jim tackles him back into the snowpack as Bill slides a gloved hand down his trousers to cup his cock. Jim shivers and presses fingers into Bill’s neck where it meets his ear, smiling as Bill tilts his head back and parts his lips.

The game only lasts about ten minutes after that; the last of the Saturday afternoon light is dying, and the night brings with it a deeper cold that bites through multiple layers of wool. Many trudge off to the college again, shivering; Jim turns toward the pavilion, where he stashed a dry pair of trousers. Bill, sopping wet, scowling, and ruddy with the cold, follows.

“I told you to bring an extra pair,” Jim remarks when the door closes behind them and he heads for his locker, as Bill places hands on his arse. “And to try to be circumspect occasionally,” he adds, sliding out of Bill’s grip.

“You were the only one bright enough to want to walk home in something dry.” Bill begins to undo Jim’s trousers for him as he pulls out the dry pair. “I came to help.”

Bill’s touch is scorching, even through drenched trousers and pants. Jim awaits the day this won’t make him break out in a sweat, won’t send a thrill up through his stomach and force his heart into his throat. Today he makes do with allowing Bill to have his way, pulling down his trousers and pants and freeing his cock into the cool air of the pavilion.

“You make me so hard, just looking at you,” Bill whispers into his ear, palming Jim’s cock. Jim bites back a groan and lets Bill maneuver them toward a nearby mirror. “Look at yourself. _How_ are you so beautiful, James?”

“I practice each morning, William,” Jim murmurs, snorting as Bill runs the tip of a finger over his slit. “Though I’m not so vain as you, git.”

“No?” Bill continues nuzzling Jim’s neck; in the mirror, Jim can see the pucker of his mouth and swallows back a rush of saliva at the thought of those lips on his prick. “I suppose I’m the prettier of the two of us.”

Jim digs his fingers into Bill’s thighs behind him, begins massaging as Bill tweaks the head of his cock. “You are. What is it Macmillan called you yesterday? ‘Christ’s Apollo’?”

“Blasphemous.” Bill slides his hand down Jim’s shaft, circling the edges of his balls, and Jim takes in a sharp breath, spreading his legs to allow greater contact. Bill obliges, cupping his balls with one hand as the other tickles his frenulum.

“Entirely—appropriate,” Jim retorts between shallow gasps.

“Yes, I suppose so, Narcissus.” Bill picks up the speed of his stroking. “Listen here, Jimbo, if I suck you now, how long will it take you to get hard again?”

Jim shudders, his prick twitching in Bill’s grasp. “Probably about five seconds.”

“Good.” Bill releases him, settles on his knees before him. Jim stares down into the liquid brown of his laughing, hungry eyes. “I need to have you properly in my bed later. Don’t look away, darling,” he adds, tapping the mirror with a finger as Jim continues to stare at him. “Don’t miss the treat of yourself coming.”

“The real treat is you,” Jim whispers as Bill tongues the head of his cock. In the mirror, his own face is red and sweaty; he slides fingers into Bill’s short curls to give himself something more attractive to look at, the splay of skin and soft brown hair a bit like one of Bill’s many oblique, anonymous sketches of them together. “Narcissus.”

Bill laughs around his prick, the vibrations dragging Jim close to the edge already. He slides a hand back past Jim’s balls toward his arsehole as Jim widens his stance yet again to accommodate Bill’s head and arm. Jim, meanwhile, can only stare at his scrunched face and the back of Bill’s head for so long and finds his eyes drifting back to Bill’s face between his legs, the hollowing of his cheeks and stretch of his lips. Bill cannot take him all the way in, has a shallow and mostly useless throat, but his mouth itself and his tongue are beautiful in speech and in sex, and the slide of his warmth around Jim’s prick, accompanied by the scorching heat of his tongue where it directly touches the shaft, makes Jim light-headed in minutes.

“You’re so good, silent,” Jim mumbles as Bill slides a finger into his hole, adding a prick of genuine—delicious—stretching pain to the rush of energy below his waist. “Such blessed silence. Such a good use of your mouth.”

Bill swallows around him, tightening the pressure on his prick, and Jim moans. Bill returns the sound, spearing himself another centimeter or two on Jim and sliding the finger up his arse to the first knuckle. Jim grunts and tightens his grip in Bill’s hair.

“I do love the sight of you stuffed full of my cock,” Jim says, his voice hoarse, as Bill places his second hand on his shaft and strokes in time to the licks of his tongue. “I only wish you could talk a filthy blue streak at the same time.”

Bill mumbles something around his cock, its sensation obscene even if its exact meaning is obscured, and Jim laughs before swearing as the edges of his vision begin to blur.

“Wotcher,” he mutters, touching Bill’s shoulder to warn him as the heat at the base of his prick intensifies. Bill, he knows from experience, loves the taste of cock but hates that of semen. Bill merely tightens his suction on Jim’s prick and hangs on as Jim comes, splayed against the wall behind them as the strength drains from his legs.

When Jim reemerges a minute later, blinking the rush from his eyes, Bill is getting to his feet, wiping a trail of come from the corner of his mouth. As Jim stretches, Bill kisses him full on the mouth, transferring the bitter taste between them until Jim pulls gently away.

“What, are you that starving for me?”

“Itches to scratch.” Bill kisses his neck as Jim kicks his soaked pants and trousers from around his ankles and reaches for the dry pair abandoned on a neighboring bench. “Something new for the new term.”

Jim is weirdly touched by this bit of intimacy, though he keeps his face cheerily blank as he dresses and they return to Bill’s room. They’ve just slid inside when Bill begins shucking his own clothes, leaving them on a pile on the floor as he sinks nude onto his bed. Jim scratches the back of his head to cover the nervous twitch beginning to take hold of his limbs; Bill is fully hard, smirking, and reclining on his back.

“When I said five seconds, it may have been a touch facetious,” Jim says as he approaches the bed. Bill’s smirk deepens. “Could have done you in the pavilion, too, William darling.”

“I like to fuck in luxury,” Bill replies. Jim stares pointedly at the books, paint, and canvases that cover most of the free space in the room. “Well, I like to _be_ fucked in luxury.”

Jim swallows and thumbs the button of his trousers. “Do you mean—?”

“You aren’t normally this slow!” Despite the impatience in his voice, Bill’s eyes are wide with something more than his usual laconic humor. He nods at the flat placket of Jim’s trousers. “I can wait. I’d prefer _not_ to wait, but gift horses and mouths and all that rot.”

Jim undoes his shirt and trousers with hands that tremble, then fumbles through the back of the bottom drawer of the bedside table, where Bill pretends to hide the jar of Vaseline. He tosses this up on the bed as he removes his pants and slides up between Bill’s legs.

“You’re serious?”

Bill grunts, working at the lid of the Vaseline. “You’re the first person I’ve had balk at the idea, Jimbo.” He raises his eyebrows. “Is my arse not appealing enough? Do you not want to?”

“No, I want to.” The firmness of Jim’s voice startles them both; Bill laughs. “You just come up with these ideas out of nowhere. I figured you’d always want it the other way around.”

Bill strokes his soft cock, and Jim shivers. It’s slightly painful, and yet already he can feel the blood returning.

“I thought _you’d_ always want it the other way around.” Bill kisses his shoulder, and Jim feels his stomach swoop. “Talking at cross-purposes, the pair of us. Never mind. I want to be fucked into a mattress, just fucked to shreds. It releases the bottleneck of my creativity.” Jim snorts; Bill bites gently at his earlobe. “Would you, Prideaux?”

Jim kisses Bill’s chest. “If you can make me hard again, Haydon.”

This is an easy task, and they both know it. Bill strokes him, whispering unadulterated filth into Jim’s ears until his body is vibrating with his own sexual prowess as related to him by Bill.

“I just want you inside me, Jimmy my darling. A great hunking _athleticus_ like you, God above would let you in Him for nothing. I want your hands on my hips, bruising; I want your teeth on the scruff of my neck; I want to ache for a week because of you.”

“I can only guarantee a day,” Jim whispers to this last. His prick is at full mast again. Bill slides away from him with a final stroke and flops onto his stomach. Jim’s fucked men before—a few garden boys in Strasbourg, a fellow member of the rugby team after an orientation scrum left them both thrumming with energy—but none he cared about even half as much as he’s already made himself care about Bill, whose broad, tight arse now lies before him.

“Good enough.” Bill pushes the Vaseline down to him. “I’ll take anything.” His voice breaks slightly on this second sentence, and Jim feels another swoop in his stomach, an ache that sets his nerves on edge as he unscrews the jar and slicks up a finger.

“Ready?” When Bill nods, Jim circles his hole with the lubed finger, watching as Bill arches up into his touch. “One finger first.”

He works him slowly, pushing in bit by bit until he’s up to the knuckle in Bill’s arse and Bill is groaning. With his free hand he massages the small of Bill’s back, its elegant curve that mirrors that of his spine as he bends into Jim’s finger. Jim kisses the sweat beginning to bead on Bill’s arse as he twists his finger, the tastes of salt and skin mingling in his mouth.

“Fuck.” Bill moans as Jim continues to explore with tongue. His flesh is hot, his voice frying so that Jim’s cock pulses in response. “Don’t put that on me or I’ll go, I swear it.”

“You’d deserve it,” Jim whispers into his hole as he removes his finger to reapply Vaseline. “Hush,” he adds as Bill voices his displeasure with the situation. “Two?”

“Twelve would be grand,” Bill retorts, turning slightly to the side to get a glimpse of Jim’s soft, wicked smile. His face is red and twice as sweaty as his arse.

“I only have ten, darling Bill.” Jim’s tongue trips slightly on the endearment, his heart thudding faster within his chest. “Try two.” He slides two fingers up into Bill’s arse and laughs at the low stream of cursing this produces.

It’s another five or so minutes before Bill’s whispered pleading reaches what Jim would classify as “desperation.”

“Please, Jimmy, please, dear God. I’ll fall open if you do anymore, please, just, please.”

Jim adds Vaseline to his free hand and begins slicking up his cock.

“I don’t think you can take it, William, a sweet little emperor to be like yourself?” He leans in to press the very tip of his cock against the hole, alongside his two fingers. “ _Homo athleticus_ might ruin you for all other humans.”

“You bloody arsehole, just get in—”

Jim removes his fingers and slides the tip of his prick in before Bill can complain any further. Bill shouts. Jim groans at the suction pulling at him, urging him deeper already.

“Fuck, mate,” Jim murmurs, bending over Bill’s back to press a kiss, with a swipe of teeth, to the nape of his neck. “You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘discretion,’ do you?”

Bill grabs the nearest pillow and bites it as Jim shifts. Jim, laughing softly, sits back up onto his knees and grips Bill’s waist, pressing forward centimeter by centimeter until he’s halfway in.

“Just—move—” Bill grunts after a minute of this stretching and resettling. “Take me—”

Jim thrusts. Bill’s arse around him is blazingly warm and tight, flexing with his movement, and he murmurs obscenities of his own as he pulls back for his next thrust.

They fall into a rhythm, Jim clutching Bill’s hips as he picks up depth and speed, Bill swearing into the pillow with each thrust inward. Jim’s stomach roils with a combination of lust and fondness. Bill’s voice takes on a whining quality after a few minutes as he begins to beg once more: “Please, Jim. Harder. I know you can.”

Jim obeys, tightening his grip on Bill as he slams into his arse. Bill’s yelp reverberates.

“Better?” Jim asks after another five thrusts, when Bill has gone mostly mute again. Bill’s reply is a high-pitched whine that makes hair stand up on the back of Jim’s neck; looking down as he thrusts, Jim sees that Bill’s balls are tightening up on themselves. “You bloody maniac.”

He strokes Bill, fumbling to coordinate rhythms as he continues to fuck him. Bill’s cries grow in volume, the pillow discarded to the floor, but Jim cannot be bothered to care as he seats himself fully in Bill’s arse at last and Bill makes a noise that sounds like a joyous sob.

“Again, please, oh god, Jim—”

The rest of Bill’s pleas fade into the background as Jim thrusts in, to the hilt, again and again, one hand bruising Bill’s hip, the other stroking the head of his cock until, with a particularly quick thrust, Bill explodes in his hand with a scream he muffles against the duvet. Jim keeps his hands where they are until he comes himself, a short and dry affair, and leans, panting, over Bill.

They fall to the sheets in a sweaty tangle, Jim slowly disentangling himself from Bill’s arse as Bill grunts. He’s seen Bill after climax almost more times than he can count now, his face always beet red but evenly so, elegant in its disarray. Now he is splotched red and white, with drool on his chin, his cock twitching uselessly between his legs as Jim climbs out of bed to grab one of the flannels hanging on the back of the door.

“This is a disgusting mess,” he murmurs into Bill’s hair as he wipes Bill’s cock and then his own before turning his attention to the bits of come already beginning to leak from Bill’s arse.

“Love you too, darling,” Bill snarks, voice still thin from lack of air. Jim shivers.

“Did I loosen your blocked whatever?” Jim presses his face into the small of Bill’s back rather than examine the sweet, easy contentment spiking in his stomach and through his veins.

“Probably on multiple layers.” Bill threads fingers through Jim’s hair, massaging his scalp. They rest in silence for several minutes before Bill sits up, dislodging Jim from his exploration of his postclimax skin. “Stay there.”

Jim flops onto his back, narrowly avoiding the stains left on the sheets. When Bill returns, it’s with sketchbook and charcoal pencil.

“Move back on your side?”

Jim blows a raspberry as he shifts. “There are sticky patches I’m avoiding.”

“And good light.” Bill pushes Jim gently to put more space between them. “You stared at my arse, now I’m returning the favor.”

He’s in a patch of come; he ought to complain. Instead Jim lies quietly, contemplating the wall before him and the half-finished oil painting Bill has stubbornly hung there for all to see, despite its imperfections. The sound of Bill’s pencil against paper, short and long strokes blending into one soft whisper, lulls Jim nearly to sleep.

He stirs at pressure against his lower back.

“Lie still,” Bill murmurs, pressing a kiss to one of Jim’s arse cheeks. The pressure continues—the point of a pencil digging into his skin.

“What are you writing?” Jim asks after a few moments as Bill grips part of his back to steady the skin. “Communist Manifesto?”

Bill’s laugh raises goosebumps on Jim’s arms. “Nothing so selfless.”

“Are you branding me?” Jim reaches back to tickle Bill. “Because if so, I really must say that tonight has given _me_ the right to brand _you_ —”

“You can if you like.” Bill brushes at his skin, then straightens. “Go to the mirror and see.”

A full-length mirror hangs on the side of Bill’s wardrobe. Jim aligns himself with it as Bill leans against his shoulder, smiling.

Across the small of his back Bill has written both their names in bold cursive, and underneath that, in block print, a tiny “Thank you.”

Jim kisses the top of Bill’s head before pushing him back, laughing, toward the bed. Bill submits to his pencil, and the easy tracing of their names again on his own skin, though Jim’s hand shakes as he does it.

Hours later, when Bill is sprawled asleep on his stomach and Jim lies awake looking at the words near Bill’s arse, he picks up the pencil from where it was tossed on the floor and adds, in tiny print:

_szeretlek_

He stares at the letters for five or so minutes, his heart thudding, before wiping them away, leaving a black smudge. Bill stirs, crushes Jim’s arm with his sleepy, happy grip.

“Must go now?”

Jim glances at the clock in the moonlight—still hours until dawn.

“Not yet.”

“Drawing on me. Lots of e’s.”

Jim smiles into Bill’s back, traces the bruises left from his own fingers near Bill’s hips. “Just practicing.”

“I liked it.” Bill yawns. “Sleep, beautiful.”

Jim kisses Bill’s shoulder, drapes himself around him, and closes his eyes. With his fingers he traces the word again and again onto Bill’s arm, _szeretlek szeretlek szeretlek_ , until they both drift into sleep.

Bill is awake and at his desk, writing, when Jim wakes, just after dawn, and begins fumbling for his clothes to break back into his own room. Bill watches him dress, then kisses him full on the lips before stumbling down the hall to the bath, leaving a piece of paper hanging half off the desk.

Jim glances at it as he struggles with the buttons on his shirt: the curve of a man’s back and arse, entirely nude. In the rough folds of the sheet around the figure are tiny letters.

_A m o u r._

Jim’s throat closes; he presses a fist to his mouth to stop from laughing, or crying, or whatever it is that the ball within his chest wants. He shoves on his boots and coat and ghosts down the hall, smiling at nothing, fit to burst with relief.

**Author's Note:**

>  _szeretlek_ : Hungarian for "I love you"  
>  _amour_ : French for "love"


End file.
